Books to Read on a Visit to the Southwest

At the end of 2016, we took a family vacation to Arizona. Like all good vacations, I prepared a little reading list for the trip.

The Books

While we were traveling, I read Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin and Turtle Dream by Gerald Hausman. There were little pearls of word wonder in both books. Both books were also collections of short writings, one non-fiction and one fiction. Perfect for vacation reading where you don’t always have large gaps of time. When we vacation, we are usually always on the go, there isn’t a lot of sitting around.

Earlier this year, I also read Waterless Mountain, a Newbery Award book, that was “transportational” in its writing. I felt I was in the Navajo land when I read this book. CodeTalkers was also about Navajos, but the geography was the South Pacific, not the Southwest.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather is a book I read on a twenty-state road trip twenty years ago. I highly recommend this book if you ever head there, but I did not read it on this trip.

I also selected Cuentos: Tales from the Hispanic Southwest: Based on Stories Originally Collected by Juan B. Rael (English and Spanish Edition) to read, but I didn’t have the time. It’s still on my bedside table, ready for me to pick up when I’m searching for stories.